


When You Were Mine

by Quixcy



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Canon Compliant, Drama, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Bond Shenanigans, Force Ghost Ben Solo, Force Ghost Possession, Force Ghost(s), Inappropriate Use of the Force, M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Post-TRoS, Redemption, Reunions, Slow Burn, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, That's Not How The Force Works, The Resistance Era, World Between World
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21897199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quixcy/pseuds/Quixcy
Summary: Post-TROS.When a bounty hunter attacks Rey on Tatooine, an unlikely ally comes to her rescue. An ally who died on a dark and desolate planet, but even death it seemed isn’t strong enough to sever their bond. Ben Solo has a second chance to set things right — that is, if Finn and Poe don’t exorcize him back to the Force, first.
Relationships: Finn/Poe, Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 70
Kudos: 619





	1. I Feel You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiiii! I’m back on my old bullshit. I will die clutching Reylo to my heart and no one can stop me. Also, I feel like I’m the only Reylo fan who didn’t hate Rise of Skywalker? I thought it was fun, and yeah Ben died but like, that’s what fanfic’s for! 
> 
> So here I am, pretending to have a plot while I just make excuses for Ben and Rey to make-out.

Rey closed her eyes.

Her mind was clear and quiet, like the desert of Tatooine. She thought her connection to the Force would be different after... well, just after. But it was there, waiting like the gentle ebb of an ocean, sharp and wide and welcoming. Familiar in a way she couldn’t describe.

It wasn’t terrible here, she told herself. It wasn’t all that bad. The sunsets were beautiful, and she had BB-8, who was nosing through an old speeder on the far side of the settlement. She didn’t know how long she would stay here.

But she didn’t really know where else she was supposed to be.

The war was over. The Empire destroyed. The galaxy free.

What more could anyone want from her? She was the last Jedi in the galaxy, the last Palpatine, the last Skywalker.

The last.

There was no where left for her to go. She wasn’t all that good at the politics of resuscitating a republic, and she would only get in the way of Finn and Poe as they brought peace to all of the other systems and ran the last remnants of the Empire into the crevices where they belonged. She was a good fighter—the best. Poe had said as much.

There was no more fighting, though.

There was only a desert, and an abandoned settlement, and for a minute—a moment—she wished that the Force felt different, too. Broken, when Ben Solo died. But it wasn’t. It was just quiet.

Because the person on the other side was somewhere she couldn’t reach.

And now she was here. Where everything began.

Rey heard the speeder before she saw it, when a buzzing sound filled her ears. She opened her eyes, and the sand that had been circling around her crashed to the ground. She dropped out of the air, and quickly climbed the sandy hill to peer out over the desert.

It was a speeder, and it was heading her way.

She touched her saber to reassure herself. Whoever they were were just passing through. They weren’t stopping here.

But they did.

The stranger dismounted from his speeder. He wore strange armor—not anything she recognized. It was composed of sharp pieces of metal and gauzy flowing ends, a starcrest emblazoned above his heart, his white-blonde hair pulled back into intricate braids. He adjusted his bracers.

“I know you’re there,” he shouted into the abandoned settlement.

She winced, but stayed still.

“I saw your droid near that downed speeder. If you don’t come out, I’ll go get him and dismantle him for parts.”

Cursing under her breath, she climbed the rest of the way up the sandy hill and stood facing the stranger. He was not much taller than she was. Broader, with a blaster at his hip and a peculiar-looking sniper rifle slung over his shoulder.

A bounty hunter, just her luck.

He smirked. “I thought that’d get you out. Are you the one who defeated the Emperor?”

She replied, rather guardedly, “...Perhaps.”

“I do hate half-answers. Are you?”

Rey steeled her shoulders. Pursed her lips. Anyone who came looking for her, asking for her like this, couldn’t want anything good. How had she not sensed his approach?

He sighed. “Fine, guess we’re doing this the hard way. No offense, doll, but this is just business.” Then he unholstered his blaster and shot first.

She threw her hand out to deflect the first blast. It pinged against the stucco of the domed buildings. She drew her saber and held it out in front of her. “The business of killing?”

“You’ve killed, too,” he replied and shot again.

She whirled out of the way and parried the second blast, sending it back toward him. He side-stepped. The shot burned a hole in the fuselage of his speeder. He groaned. “Really? Do you want to get me angry?”

“I want you to leave,” she replied.

“You just made that harder for me—”

She threw out her hand again to force him back, but her powers slid off of him. Like water off the windshield of the Falcon. Confused, she tried again. Threw out her hand. Attempted to grab him with—

The Force slid past him, as if—as if he didn’t exist.

He charged at her and, taken by surprise, slammed the butt of his blaster into her face. She stumbled back, dazed, as he swooped his leg behind her knees and pulled her feet out from under her. She hit the sandy ground so hard it knocked the breath out of her. Her heart thundered in her ears.

She—she didn’t understand it. Why didn’t her powers work on him? It was as if... as if the Force didn’t see him. But how?

That wasn’t possible.

He pinned her to the ground, his knee on her chest, and pressed the mouth of his blaster just above the flesh of her heart. He’d barely broken a sweat. “Now,” he said, grinning, “let’s try this again. Are you the savior of the galaxy?”

Rey curled her fingers into the sand. They were trembling.

 _Be with me. Be with me. Be with me_ , she thought, praying, reaching out. To remember that she wasn’t alone. To hear their voices. To hear _his_ voice.

But her head was empty.

And she was alone. Just as she had been at the beginning. Before the war. Before her training. Before everything. It was as if nothing changed except her, and now she was too big for this desert planet, and too broken to leave it.

“Are you the fabled hero who saved everyone?” He asked again, the mocking in his voice twisting a knife right into her soul.

“Not everyone,” she replied thickly.

* * *

He felt her.

Even though he couldn’t recall who he was, or his purpose, or himself, he knew her like he knew the stars. And he knew the stars—he was part of them, the ebb and flow. At first, he had tried to keep the memory of himself, but it poured away like sand through his fingers. Every time he tried to hold on, more of him slipped away.

Until he was nothing. Everything. Until he flowed across time and space. Until he was an expanse of stardust and destiny, but some small part of him lingered on a dusty desert planet. Some part he didn’t remember, but it felt important.

It felt—

_—With me. Be with me._

_Be with me._

_Be..._

The voice. It felt like a memory he almost remembered.

The scene sharpened. A bounty hunter, his pistol pressed to the heart of her.

_Her._

The star he orbited.

The hunter was going to kill her, and that strange part of him, the part that never quite gave into the expanse, roared.

* * *

His eyebrows shot up. “Oh this is interesting. I thought Jedi didn’t have feelings. Pity I can’t pry open your chest and see what else you can feel.”

She set her jaw, and forced out, even though his knee was squeezing her chest so tightly, she could barely get a breath, “What do you—want fr-from—me?”

His grin spread into a sharp smile. “You’ll find out—”

Suddenly, the bounty hunter flew backwards, as if thrown off of her, and landed ten feet away. He quickly rolled onto his feet, and popped up again. His eyes were wide—confused. “What the—”

There was a glimmer of something in the air. Hard to see in the setting light of the twin suns, but it was there, wavering like heat on the sand. It came at him quickly. Too quickly. Rey heard her saber shake on the sand before it flew toward the shimmer. The bright golden blade extended, and slammed through the bounty hunter’s middle.

He sucked in a painful breath. His last.

“How did you...” he wheezed, confused, staring at that strange glimmer.

The shimmery air coalesced. Became sharp lines that formed a figure. A person. A man, bathed in blue light.

“You could call me a force to be reckoned with,” replied the ghost, the edges of his voice tipped with barbed sarcasm.

The bounty hunter slid down to his knees, and then crumpled onto his side, and stopped moving.

Rey slowly sat up. She stared at the ghost, the blood draining from her face. “...Ben?”

He turned to her, eyebrows furrowing. Then he looked down at his hands—and dropped her saber. In surprise, he stumbled back. “I’m...” He turned his hands over, and looked back at her, echoing her confusion. “...Yes?”

Silently, she rose to her feet. “Is it? Is it really?”

“Yes,” he said with a little more certainty. Then he knelt down and patted the dead bounty hunter until he found a small square box. A tracking device. He crushed it in his hand. “There will be more coming for you. You need to leave.”

“But why are they after me?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, “but they are.”

“And how did he withstand my Force attacks?”

He grabbed her lightsaber, and started toward her. “I don’t know. Where is your droid?”

“Out scavenging a speeder a few hundred yards away—who does he work for?”

He gave her a pleading look and offered up her saber to her, “I’m dead, my light, not all-knowing.”

_My light._

The pet name startled them both. He quickly looked away. “I mean—Rey. Let’s go find your droid and get back to your ship. You do still have it here, right? Whoever else has one of those trackers will be swarming here soon enough, so it’s best if we—”

She gently caught him by the arm. He felt solid, like Master Luke did when he appeared to her. But Ben felt warm, too, as if she could close her eyes and trick herself into thinking he had never died. Where her fingers touched, color rippled across the blue aura.

“How are you here?” She asked.

He looked down at her, and his dark eyebrows furrowed. “I heard you.”

“...Heard me?”

“‘Be with me’ you said, and I... I wanted to answer. More than anything—”

She reached up and took his face in her hands, and brought it down to hers, and pressed her lips against his. A spark lit through their force bond, blinding. It felt like dawn after years of night, like sunlight breaking over a cold desert horizon. She pulled him closer, wishing she could say in a kiss everything she really couldn’t in words. Be with me, she had pleaded, and now here he was, as if summoned out of the immovable stone fortress of her heart.

He curled his fingers into her hair and anchored her head with a hand, and deepened the kiss. His tongue traced her lips, soft and dry and he hoped he was doing it properly. He had kissed other Jedi students when he was training, but he had never really felt it, and now he knew why. Because there was a part of the connection missing, the part in the back of his head, the sear of white-hot emotions of something a Jedi really had no business thinking about, but there it was. Her feelings. For him.

She nibbled his bottom lip, and he felt himself getting hard beneath his robes, which was puzzling in and of itself because he was, well, not very corporeal. But that was a question for later. Not now.

And Rey, for her part, had never really wondered what a Force Ghost tasted like, but she thought—decidedly—his lips tasted of something sweet, starlight mixed with honey.

_Blep-Bleep!_

The sound of BB-8 startled them apart.

Rey glanced down at the droid, who bleeped at her again, asking why she was standing there alone.

Ben cleared his throat, “Only force-sensitive people can see me. Droids aren’t included in that.”

“Oh, um—Force stuff, BB-8,” she said, rubbing her bottom lip. It felt real. He felt real. Like flesh and blood, but she knew he wasn’t. She had to remember that. “A ghost.”

 _Of who?_ The droid asked.

She knew exactly what Finn and Poe would say about her being haunted by the force ghost of Kylo Ren—they would, together, probably try to kill him all over again. She wasn’t sure if you could kill a Force Ghost, but she was quite certain they’d try. And she knew if they ever ran into Finn or Poe again, BB-8 had very loose lips, especially when it came to his best friend.

“Of...a Jedi,” she said, not quite lying.

Ben quirked an eyebrow. “Master Luke would say different. Anyway, we should get to your ship, before more hunters come.”

She looked away sheepishly, “Finn and Poe have the Falcon. I—I never really planned on leaving Tatooine.”

But what she didn’t say was that she had decided to live the rest of her life on this desert planet. As if this was where she belonged, forgotten, back to the beginning of the story.

But he knew.

He gave a soft sigh. “Stay here,” he said, “and if anyone comes hunting for you, kill them.” And before she could ask him if he would be back, he disappeared in a ripple of air, and left her alone on the darkening planet of Tatooine.

BB-8 bleeped, _Is the Jedi gone yet?_

“Yes,” she said, and then added—because she needed to say it to believe it, “but he’ll return.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * “My light” —> I thought it’d be rather poetic for Ben to call Rey his light because, like... a ray/Rey of light? She’s his light? Get it?
> 
> ...
> 
> ... I’ll see myself out, thank you.
> 
> (Next chapter’ll be up shortly! I wonder who Ben is going to find?)


	2. Around Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben goes to an unlikely ally to help Rey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the wonderful comments! Following here with chapter two, a balm for my soul, really. I hope you enjoy it! The plot is super predictable, I hope y’all don’t care. 
> 
> Not beta’d, so please excuse the grammatical errors!

Finn thrummed his fingers on the side of the chess board. He couldn’t remember how many times he lost a game of Dejarik in the last few years, but it was enough to really begin to get under his skin. Even Poe had finally beat Chewie— _once_!—in the game, and here he was, stuck in the final moves. Chewie grunted that he needed to go check on the newly-fixed hyperdrive system—it was making a weird noise again yesterday—and Finn motioned for him to leave.

How in the world did that Wookie keep winning?

It infuriated him.

Maybe if he moved that piece to...

“You need to go to Tatooine.”

The voice made Finn jump right off the bench. “Who said that?” He snapped, whirling around. The common area was empty.

No, it was almost empty.

He could feel a presence. Goosebumps prickled up the back of his neck. He only ever felt that around...

No. No, he was dead. Rey said he was dead. Dead and gone, and never having to bother them ever again.

And yet...

He shook off the feeling. _Get yourself together_ , he told himself, and decided to go to the cockpit. It had been unconventionally quiet there, even though C3P-0 was supposedly sitting with Poe. “Hey, do you know how long until we reach—”

A bolt shot out of the wall in front of him. He jerked backwards.

Okay. The Falcon was a hunk of flying space trash, but it wasn’t that bad. The feeling intensified—the goosebumps up the back of his neck, crawling up toward his scalp. He glanced over his shoulder, as if he expected to see...

But there was nothing.

Well, almost nothing.

It was easy to miss, the shadow. But the longer he stared at it, the sharper the image became. Broad and tall. A person, features sharpening into a long face and a pointed nose and dark hair, until Finn found himself staring up at the man who had haunted most of his life. He jerked back, unable to get away from him quick enough. Instead, his feet tangled in each other and he fell backwards, landing flat on his back.

It knocked the breath right out of him. The ship spun.

He groaned and sucked in a hard breath.

And then Kylo Ren, sans mask, towering over him, looked down with a ... a _worried_ expression? That couldn’t be right. It was murderous. It had to be. He couldn’t imagine anything else—

The ghost reached out a hand.

Finn scuttled back, grabbing the closest thing he could find—a wrench from a toolbox left out—and held it up against the ghost. “Don’t come any closer!”

The dead Supreme Leader raised his hands. In defeat? No, in some sort of Force move—

Finn threw the wrench.

It slipped right through him and clattered against the far wall.

“Okay,” the ghost said decidedly, “I deserved that.”

 _That_ was an understatement.

Then the ghost took a step closer. “I need you to listen, okay? You need to go to Tatooine. Now. Trust me.”

“Why go...” Wait. _Rey_ was on Tatooine. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to sit up. “What did you do to her, you bastard?”

“I would never—”

Poe shouted from the cockpit, “Finn, is that you?” There were footsteps, and he came around the bend and into the common space, and frowned when he noticed Poe on the floor.“I thought you were talking to someone. What happened?”

“He can’t see me,” Kylo Ren said by way of explanation, folding his arms over his chest. “Only force-sensitive can.”

Great.

“Uh—I—tripped,” he forced out, hopping back onto his feet. “Chewie went to go check the hyperdrive engine again so I was getting angry at this thing,” he added, motioning to the chess table. One of the pawns stretched their six arms and roared.

Poe smirked. “Still can’t beat him?”

“I don’t get how you finally did.”

“The Force,” Poe replied sarcastically, clapped Finn on the shoulder, and returned to the cockpit.

The ghost waited a moment to say, “Dad beat the Wookie once. Only once. He lets you eventually—”

Finn shot him a glare. “If you’re leading us into a trap, Kylo Ren—”

“Ben,” he corrected him, and then quieter, “Please, you have to go get her, Finn—”

The man whirled around and snarled, “No, you do not get to call me that. Not when the Empire stripped away my name, my childhood. It stole my life. And you were a part of it! You made my life a living hell—and when you wanted to make me a murder, I wouldn’t.”

“I know,” the ghost replied, and looked away. As if he was—ashamed? He’d never seen the Supreme Leader as anything more than cocky and arrogant and evil. But there was something strange in the way he held himself that remind Finn of—well, of Han Solo. The wide stance, the loose shoulders. He could see the General in him, too, but he didn’t want to look that hard. It still hurt.

“And why should I believe you? You could be a trick—some sort of Sith thing. If I’ve learned anything about people like you is that you don’t die easily. You want to make as many people suffer as you can. That’s your legacy, yeah?”

The ghost bowed his head.

“You prey on the weak and vulnerable, and you destroy everything good in your life—everything good in _our_ lives,” he added, slamming his fist against his own chest. “And you have the nerve to come here asking for our help?—What are you doing?”

The ghost was sinking down to his knees, and then he bowed, pressing his head against the floor. “Please,” the man who had once been Supreme Leader pleaded. “This is the only way I can help her. Someone’s after Rey, and she isn’t safe where she is anymore, and this is all I can do. This is all...” His voice wavered. “Please.”

Finn stood over the man he had despised for years, now kneeling in front of him, pleading with him, He pursed his lips, debating on whether he believed this delusion or not, but he had this feeling deep in his gut—one that he had learned not to ignore—that this ghost was telling the truth. That Rey was in trouble.

And that, really, was all that mattered.

He jabbed a finger at Kylo Ren and said, “You better not be lying.”

And went to tell Poe that there was a change of course, wondering if Poe would believe the story about Force-Ghost Kylo Ren, and quickly decided against tell him that part.

When he returned to the common area, the ghost was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like this chapter was very cathartic for ME, at least, since Finn never really got to punch the Force out of Kylo when he was alive.
> 
> Next chapter up soon!
> 
> (I wonder if they’ll get to Rey in time?)


	3. Return to Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey searches through the ancient Jedi texts for some answers to the bounty hunter, fearing that Ben will never return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh, thank y’all so much for all the love in the comments!! Really this is a salve for my very tortured soul, so thank you all so much for your words, it means the world! There isn’t any kissing in this chapter, sadly, but I think it’s my favorite so far?
> 
> We’re getting Deep, friends. Real Deep.

Rey paced back and forth in the dusty settlement on Tatooine, nervously chewing on her thumbnail. It had been hours already, and there was no sign of Ben. Where had he _gone_? She was afraid to ask. She was also afraid to call out to him, for fear that what she’d seen had been...

Well, some terrible trick of her mind.

And then she would feel like a fool, and impossibly more lonely than before. She didn’t think she would ever feel that way again, as she had on Jakku, but here she was—waiting. Waiting like she had for her parents to come back. Waiting, for all those years.

And now, impossibly, she was waiting again.

Maybe she’d been on Tatooine too long. Maybe the hot desert days and the frigid nights were becoming too much for her. They were playing with her mind. Tricking her in the way only grief could.

She pulled her cloak around her tighter, because the nights were cold, but tonight was especially frigid. She turned on the ancient heater in the main room of the compound, and sat down in one of the chairs. It was more like a square of rock, a bench where people once huddled around the heater, and it was immensely uncomfortable. Sometimes, if she closed her eyes, she could hear the whispers of the past, where things had been happy once, and also sad. She heard laughter sometimes around the heater, sometimes the stifle of a sob. Ghosts—she was haunted by them.

BB-8 rolled up next to her and gave a bleep.

“I know. It sounds crazy, but it’s not. I know I saw him,” she told the droid.

And what was more, when he left she inspected the body of the bounty hunter. He had been human, but there were strange black markings around his chest and neck area, like lightning strikes—charred and brittle. Rotting skin eating at fresh flesh. She quickly covered his chest back up again, swallowing the bile that had risen from her stomach.

How had he been able to avoid her force attacks? Did any of them work on him? And why hadn’t she been able to sense his approach? It was as if the Force itself didn’t acknowledge him.

And that was troubling.

Because it went against everything that she had learned about the Force, and herself, and her powers.

She also found a crest on him, one that she turned around in her fingers as she sat warming herself by the heater. It was a strange-looking crest with a mysterious constellation depicted on the front. She had never seen it before.

BB-8 bleeped again.

She frowned. “The Jedi manuscripts? Maybe...” She wasn’t very sure, but it would take her mind off of all the questions rebounding in her head, and the emotions that tempted to spill out of her skin, and the question—

_Will he come back? Will he come back to me?_

_Was he ever there?—_

_Stop it_ , she told herself, forcing herself to stand, and went over to a small and dusty box in the corner of the room and popped it open. She took three of the books out, grabbed a dehydrated pack of meat from her pack, and returned to her seat, pulling her legs up to sit cross-legged. She draped her cloak around her tighter and took a bite of the jerky. Maybe there was something in one of the Jedi manuscripts.

At least, she hoped there was.

By the third book, her vision had gone bleary, and finally she closed it and rubbed her eyes. It was only then she noticed the figure sitting across from her, one leg tucked under him, reading from another Jedi manuscript.

She jerked to sit straight. The five-hundred-year-old manuscript clattered to the dusty floor.

“Ben,” she whispered.

He looked up. “Yes?”

She blinked just to make sure he was actually there. The orange light emanating from the heater made the blue aura around him a little less, making him look a little more—well. A little more there. With her. He had half of his hair pulled back into a tight knot to keep it out of his face.

“I...” A lump formed her in her throat, but she gulped it down. “I thought you had left.”

“But I came back.” He set the book down by his side and tilted his head. “Your friends are coming to get you. They should be here in a few hours.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “My friends? But how did you...”

“The ex-stormtrooper? He’s force-sensitive.”

“He...is?”

He nodded. “And he was not happy to see me. I’ve never had a wrench thrown at me before but I’m glad even in death I’m still experiencing firsts.”

Her lips twitched into an almost-smile at the dryness in his voice. For a moment, he sounded so much like Han Solo, and a sad part of her wondered how much like his parents he actually was, and how much of that the dark side had stripped away.

He went on, “You haven’t had any trouble?”

“No, but I did find this.” She tossed him the crest, and he gave it a look. “BB-8 thought maybe one of the manuscripts might have some answers, but if there is something, I can’t find it.”

“It might be a constellation from the unknown region,” he guessed, turning the crest over, but there was nothing on the back. “Or some uncharted system. Or it could not exist at all.”

“So many possibilities,” she replied wryly as he tossed it back to her, and she put it in her satchel. A coldness crawled up her spine and she shivered, drawing her cloak around her tighter. The cold made her tired, stretched, like a string being strung too tight. She nudged her chin toward the book at his side. “What were you reading?”

He snorted a laugh, and picked up the book. “One of the texts I never got to finish during my train. I was about halfway through when...” But then he frowned, buzzing his fingers across the pages. “It doesn’t matter. I just hate leaving things half-done, so I figured who not finish it now?”

“And? What’s the verdict?”

“A waste of time, turns out. I already know what happens after you die and join the Force.”

She stilled. “And what happens?”

“Nothing.” His stare was long, like he was looking at something a thousand miles away, and not the book in his hand. “There’s nothing. Until there is.” Then he cleared his throat and returned the book to the chest. “Anyway, it’s late and you were dozing the last few pages of the Rammahgon.”

She gave a yawn. “I can’t read it anyway. It’s just so _boring_. Maybe there’s something in another one.”

“You can barely keep your eyes open.”

“I’m fine,” she insisted.

He gave her a level look when she yawned again.

“ _Fine_ , but it’s a waste. I haven’t really been able to sleep,” she admitted tiredly.

“I can stand watch if you’re afraid—”

“It’s not that,” she quickly replied, and looked away. “It’s never been that.” But before he could ask what she meant, she forced herself to her feet and put the books back int the chest, and locked it tight. Then she turned to move toward her cot when—

Something inside of her snapped. The string, pulled too tight. Her vision went black.

Her knees gave.

Ben caught her before she reached the ground, a hand on her elbow, another on her hip. She steadied herself against his side, as she sucked in a breath, color returning to her vision. Her head was buzzing.

“I’m fine,” she murmured, shaking off the dizziness. “I just—I think I expended myself too much today—Ben!” She yelped as he swooped her up into his arms, and carried her the rest of the way to her cot. “I’m fine.”

“I don’t think that word means what you think it means,” he muttered, and the said a little louder, “How long have you been unable to sleep?”

“Since Exegol,” she admitted.

“Palpatine?”

“No,” she replied quickly. She still hated hearing that name. She hated being related to it. She wanted to drain out her blood and fill her veins with something—anything—else. “Not him. I try not to think about him.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder, tilting her face into the side of his neck. She wished she knew what he smelled like. She wished she remembered. But ghosts didn’t have a scent, because they weren’t real. They were gone.

And no matter how corporeal Ben felt, he was gone, too. Out of her reach even though he held her.

Silently, he carried her over to her cot and removed her shoes. It was colder in the corner of the room, but there were a few more blankets, fur-lined and dusty, that he pulled over her. A few days ago, she had traded some scavenged parts with a passing merchant for these bits of warmth, and they were heavy and steadying, comforting when she was alone.

“Try to sleep,” he said, and turned to leave the room.

Panic built up in her middle. No, she didn’t want him to go, afraid he would disappear again.

Afraid she’d be alone again.

She caught the edge of his shirt. He wore the same clothes he had when he died. The baggy undershirt with the saber burn, the dusty trousers, the scuffed boots. He could wear anything now, but something kept him in those clothes, and in those clothes all she could see was him fading, disappearing, out of them, gone to a place she could never reach.

“I keep seeing you die every time I close my eyes,” she forced out in a whisper, her voice wobbling, and finally let go of his shirt. “I keep seeing you smile, and then you die, and I can never stop it.”

He turned back, and—to her surprise, he sank down to the ground beside her cot, because it couldn’t hold two people, and laid his head next to hers. “Then I’m not going anywhere.”

A small flicker of light igniting in her chest, timid and unsure. “But how long will you stay?”

He didn’t give a thought to it. “As long as you need me, my light,” he sighed into her hair, and she hoped, quietly, that was for a very, very long time.

In reply, she felt for his hand and laced her fingers through his. And for a moment, when she let her imagination fly, he almost felt warm, but she knew that death was cold and absolute, and the line she was treading was a thin string of hope, tied to some impossible dream.

But he was here, and for the first time since that terrible day on Exegol, she drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Excuse me while I just melt into a puddle. 
> 
> (Now the question is, who will find Rey and Ben first — another bounty hunter, or their friends?)


	4. Beside You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trouble finds Ben and Rey again, with the Falcon no where in sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHOOO! Another chapter! Thank you all for sticking with me. I do apologize for any grammatical errors. This has not been beta’d!
> 
> EDIT: Updated this chapter with corrections!

Force ghosts didn’t sleep, but he didn’t want to leave her, either. At least not until her shoulders had unwound and her breaths were long and deep. Then he picked himself up from the edge of the cot, and turned his back to her.

But how long will you stay? She had asked, and he had answered too quickly.

He’d made an unspoken promise he knew he couldn’t keep.

He didn’t know how long he would stay. How long he could stay. The longer he existed like this—corporeal and all but breathing—the more tired he felt, the more the Force beckoned him back. He could resist now, but in a few days?

He wasn’t sure.

And he was even more unsure that they would solve this ... problem ... by then, too.

When Rey had tossed the crest to him, he hadn’t lied when he said he didn’t know who or where it came from, but he also didn’t tell the exact truth, either. The moment his being came into contact with it, the crest felt wrong. It felt like something he couldn’t quite grasp, not for long, before it melted right through his hand, so he had tossed it back as quickly as possible.

When he was with the Empire, he had heard murmurings about people that possessed the sort of ability the bounty hunter had. It wasn’t so much as a shield, but an antidote to the Force. Once, somewhere between the long days of training and the sleepless nights, he overheard Snoke talking with one of the generals over the finding, but thinking about who he had been in life made his stomach twist.

Because he could see Kylo Ren in his memories, but he didn’t recognize himself. It was like looking into a mirror that was warped. But that had been him. He had given over to the Dark Side, thinking there was no other choice. There was, he had just been too afraid to take it.

Except, in the end, he did.

The least he could do now was protect Rey with what little time he had here, for whatever forsaken reason the Force returned him.

BB-8 bleeped softly from his charging station.

He sighed. “I doubt there will be anything in those manuscripts.”

_Boop-beep-bloop._

“Fine. You’re right.” Then he pulled himself up to his feet and came to sit down beside the heater again, and pulled out the Jedi manuscripts, picking up where she left off. “Though if I waste my time, I’m blaming you.”

_Blip._

He winced, but then said, “Shh, we don’t wait to wake her up.”

The droid glared, but he must’ve agreed because he pointedly plugged himself into his recharging station, and went to sleep.

As he shifted into a more comfortable position by the heater, he made sure to be quiet. It wasn’t as if he ever purposefully watched her while she slept, but it was sort of hard not to when he was alive and their connection flared—like a spark in the night—and he was still awake, and suddenly their worlds merged, and her soft breath tickled his neck. Most of the time he stayed still. He didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge her, as he forced the link closed again.

But once—only once, when he had felt particularly broken; delirious and angry and aching—he had turned around. It had been after Crait, after his stand against Master Luke, when he hadn’t slept in a few days, and the voice of his grandfather (though now he knew it was Palpatine) echoed in his head, And he thought maybe—maybe seeing her would—

But when he turned around, she’d woken up, and was looking at him, her face guarded, her lips pursed tight, her arms curled around a pillow as if to protect her very soul. They inspected each other in the silence. Wherever she was, the light was soft and blue, her hair out of its usual buns, curling against her neck with wild abandon. It was the first time he remembered wanting to brush the hair back from her face, to tuck it so gently behind her ear.

It was a feeling he hadn’t understood.

He was afraid to move. Afraid to breathe. Afraid, for the first time, she would block him out, and he didn’t understand why he was so afraid of that. Of this girl. Of this nobody scavenger from—

She raised her hand to his face, and with her thumb she wiped the tears from his cheek. “You’re crying,” she had whispered.

He sucked in a startled breath and slammed their connection closed, but the warmth of her fingers lingered on his skin, and all he wanted to do was pry his skin off just to stop feeling.

Now he couldn’t feel warmth or cold or anything in between anymore. No matter how close he sat to the heater, he just felt numb.

The hours drifted by, and he found nothing in the strange old language that even in death he couldn’t read. Which was ironic. Wasn’t he supposed to be all-knowing in death? Other Force-ghosts pretended to be, not to name names.

It was near morning before he felt something strange—like a black hole speeding toward them. A pinprick, but it grew steadily closer. It was the same feeling he had before with the bounty hunter, and that only meant one thing: it was another bounty hunter.

And Rey’s friend were no where close.

He quickly closed the book, shoved it into the box, and got to his feet.

“Rey,” he murmured.

She didn’t move. Strange.

“Rey,” he said again, a little more forceful.

This time, she tilted her head toward him, and he noticed a slight sheen of sweat covering her brow. A fever? He pressed the back of his hand against the side of her face before he realized that he couldn’t feel anything. And cursed.

She murmured something, softly, under her breath. It sounded like, “No, Ren...”

_Ren._

Now he could hear the speeder, rocking toward them. Definitely a bounty hunter.

Shit. Where was the Falcon? It should’ve been here by now.

“Think, think, think,” he muttered to himself, pulling his hands through his hair. “What are you going to do? What are you going to...” His gaze settled on her lightsaber beside her pack.

A uneasiness bloomed in the pit of his stomach. A dread.

He knew what Kylo Ren would do.

And in the head of Ben Solo, it sounded as good of an idea as naming him Supreme Leader.

In two strides he was to her lightsaber, brushing his fingers against the switch to ignite it, and instead forced the weapon into Rey’s pack, along with the box of ancient texts, and the other little scavenger tools she had laying close by. He didn’t have time to get everything. Just enough.

The speeder parked outside of the compound. Whoever it was knew they were there and they were coming—fast.

He had to be faster.

Slinging the pack over his shoulder, he returned to Rey and leaned over her. “I’m going to pick you up,” he said gently, and despite the fact that he wanted to pick her up in his arms, he knew the best way to carry her was either over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, or... “but you need to get on my back.”

“I can...walk,” she wheezed.

“I’m sure you can try,” he agreed. “Now give me your hands.” And, gently, he helped her raise her arms and put them around his neck, and he pulled her legs around his waist, and hoisted her onto his back.

She clung on weakly, pressing her face into his back. “No, I can... I can...”

“Too late,” he replied, and kicked BB-8 with the side of his foot. “Wake up, we gotta go.”

The droid gave a sleepy bleep and disconnected from the power source. Together, they moved toward the back of the settlement, through room after abandoned room.

The bounty hunter was picking their way through the settlement now, loud and obnoxious.

“It’s a ... dead-end ... this way,” Rey wheezed.

“Trust me, I’ve got a sense for this,” he replied as they came upon the very back of the ruins, where there was no way out.

“For getting us...killed?”

“No,” he replied, and pressed a hand to the back wall, and closed his eyes in concentration. “For making dramatic exits.”

Pebbles and broken-off bits of stonewall began to levitate, along with her fur-lined blanket and hair. He concentrated harder, envisioning what he wanted to do, pulling energy into the center of his palm—and thrust it out.

The wall burst outward in an explosion, bringing in steep silver shafts of starlight.

Then he climbed over the rubble out of the back of the ruins, and when BB-8 cleared the rocks, clenched his fist behind him. The rest of the room crumbled, sealing the exit.

The droid beeped erratically.

“I know. I’m not planning on being out here long.”

_Bleep-bleep._

“Yes I think they’ll come. Don’t you?”

_Bleep._

Ben gave the droid a disparaging look. “But they’re your friends!”

The droid didn’t have a very good answer for that. He got stuck in a divot, but Ben kicked him out of it. The sand was troublesome, and a lot deeper than he expected. As a force-ghost, he didn’t really expect to sink ankle-deep into the dunes, and yet here he was.

At least he was tall enough that it didn’t really matter.

_Bleeeep-Bloop._

He froze in his footsteps. “What? Already?”

Behind him, the bounty hunter emerged from the settlement. Oh, this was bad. They weren’t nearly as far as he’d hoped before the bounty hunter figured out they weren’t there, and he could feel himself waning—just a little—just enough for the pack to slip through his shoulder. But he caught it before it reached the ground, and looped it over his shoulder again. If he pushed himself too hard he was afraid he would disappear completely, and Rey might not have the power to call him back.

Leaving Rey alone was terrifying, but the nothingness between Exegol and Tatooine, the space between, frightened him to his core.

He didn’t want to fight the bounty hunter, but he had a sinking suspicion that he didn’t have a choice. He knelt down and gently let Rey off him, and propped her against the pack.

She caught him by the wrist. “They’ll ... come.”

“They aren’t here, though,” he replied, and took out her saber.

The bounty hunter boarded their speeder again, and shot toward them. A thousand yards—eight hundred.

Seven hundred.

He tightened his grip on her saber, and ignited it.

“Are you sure they’re going to come?” He asked, and when she didn’t respond, he glanced backwards to her. She laid against the pack, eyes half-open, her lips parted, drooping with fever. “Rey?”

She didn’t respond.

This time, he called true—

_My light?_

She sucked in a shaky breath, and gave a small nod.

He faced the speeder again with new resolve. Okay. If she believed in her friends, then he would, too. He turned off the blade and stepped out of his fighting stance.

Five-hundred yards.

 _Bleep!_ BB-8 cried.

“Shush, I’m concentrating.”

Four-hundred.

_Boop-beep!_

“That really isn’t helping.”

Three—

Suddenly, a laser blast from a ship canon spiraled down from the sky and blew it to smithereens. The Millennium Falcon swirled into view with a roar of its engines, thrusters bright as it reared back and lowered itself onto the dunes. Sand kicked up, swirling around so thick he put up an arm to shield his eyes against the sting. The landing door dropped down, and on it was Rey’s friend.

Finn.

Ben quickly stashed the saber back into the pack, and went to pick Rey up again, but Finn was already there, pulling her up. “What did you do to her?” Finn snapped.

Ben froze. “I—I didn’t do anything.”

_Bleep-beep!_

“See? The droid agrees!”

Finn pressed the back of his hand against her cheek. “She’s boiling with fever!”

“Thank you for stating the obvious—there’s more,” he added, turning toward the northern dunes. A feeling in the back of his mind rattled, warning him.

“More of what?”

A fleet of twenty—twenty-five?—speeders crested the hill, and Ben felt the curl of dread in his stomach bloom.

“Them,” he replied.

BB-8, having had enough of this, rolled quickly up the ramp and into the falcon. Finn hoisted Rey up in his arms and followed him to the ship. Ben was the last up the ramp, and he turned back toward the speeders cresting over the horizon, the glint of the twin suns on their strange armor. Then he slammed his hand on the button to close the landing door.

“Poe! Chewie! _Fly_!” Finn cried.

The ship rattled, swirling up into the air, and Ben felt his stomach drop. It always did on the Falcon. It might’ve been the fastest ship in the galaxy, but it one terribly rough ride. He tried not to think about the Falcon, or how fast they were jettisoning out of the atmosphere, as he went to find where Finn took Rey. He found them in one of the quarters off of the main common area. She was stretched out on the single bed, murmuring nonsensical words as Finn put his hand to the back of her head, and cursed again. She looked pale in the Falcon halogens, deathly so, and it twisted Ben’s gut to see it. How had he not felt her getting sick? It came on so quickly, he didn’t even notice until—

“It’s poison,” he realized, and in two quick steps came up beside Finn, and lifted up the left side of her shirt. There was small wound, no bigger than a pinprick, but from it dark rotting branches reached across her skin. “The bounty hunter yesterday must’ve poisoned her before I arrived.”

“You a doctor now and a force ghost? How did you get into the Force anyway? I thought they didn’t let Sith in?”

“I wasn’t a Sith,” he quickly corrected. “They have the glowing yellow eyes. I didn’t have the glowing yellow eyes.”

“Oh, is that all?”

Ben began to state the other differences, but then thought better of it, and shook his head. Because when it came down to it, he also didn’t know why he was part of the Force and not... well, just dead. Like his father. “We need to get her to a doctor.”

In reply, Finn forced himself away from the bed and turned to face him. “I need some answers, _Ren_.”

He winced at the name. “I know, but I’m as confused as you are. I don’t know why I’m here. She called and I answered.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem. Every time you answered, it was always with a death threat, so excuse me if I’m a little suspicious.” Then Finn walked right through him, a tingly, terrible sensation that left him shivering, and out of the room.

He steadied himself against the side of the bed.

“Were you talking to yourself?” He heard the pilot’s voice—Poe, resistance general—ask. “BB-8 said that Rey’s pretty bad off.”

“The ghost of Kylo Ren said bounty hunters poisoned her. We should get her to Maz, quick. I hope she’ll know what to do.”

“Wait— _Kylo Ren_?—”

The Wookie gave a guttural yowl.

Ben closed the door to the quarters, and massaged the bridge of his nose. There was a headache beginning in the middle of his skull, and he wasn’t sure if it was a force-ghost thing or a stressed-because-everyone-hates-me-including-me thing, but if he had to guess then it would be the latter.

It was only after a moment that he realized exactly whose quarters he was in. Or, at least, whose they used to be. He remembered the bunk, and the desk, and the bare closet, as if from some other life. Perhaps it was. The quarters once belonged to his father, though his father always had a bunch of junk in here. Spare parts and award medals he tossed on the desk and memos from deals gone right—and wrong. He could still see him in his memories, though he couldn’t remember his voice anymore—and it was all his fault.

He knew it was.

It was the moment that haunted his sleep when he was alive, standing on that bridge across from his father. “I know what I have to do, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it,” he had said, pleading, because he had tried to fight back.

He had tried to stop his hand. To turn the blade. To press it into his own stomach instead, as Snoke howled in his head,

_Destroy._ _Destroy._

_**Destroy.** _

And then he did.

Because he wasn’t strong enough. Because there wasn’t enough light left.

Though, as it turned out, it wasn’t light he needed, but someone to show him the way out of that darkness.

Now his late father’s quarters were sparse, the only clothes a few shirts and trousers, presumably belonging to either Finn or Poe. He slid down to the floor and put his head on his knees, and closed his eyes for a moment.

A small one.

Whoever was after them wanted to kill Rey, that much he was sure of now. Or if not kill her, then wound her enough to take her captive, who was even more worrying. And the bounty hunters... they all had on the same uniform. The same strange armor.

What if they weren’t bounty hunters at all?

In the silence, he tried to feel into the Force, to sense his family—his mother, his uncle, his grandfather—but there was no one.

“I could really use some help right how,” he muttered.

And in reply there was a quiet _beep-boop_ and the door to the quarters opened. BB-8 poked his head in.

Ben glared. “You are perhaps the most annoying droid—” His words caught in his throat. “Droid. You’re a droid but...” He stared at BB-8 for a baffled moment, trying to process the one thing he hadn’t realized until this very moment. “You... _you_ can see me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! A solid emotional chapter! I really do love writing snarky Ben Solo. He’s such a gem. And don’t worry, there’ll be more kissing soon, I promise!
> 
> (Can Maz do anything? What’s this strange poison? Will we figure out who these bounty hunter people are? Who knows? Wheeee!)


	5. Within Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Rey grows sicker, there’s only one way to save her, but Ben doesn’t know if he can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I’m back with more! This time, there’s *gasp* KISSING! Joking aside, thank you so much for coming with me on this cathartic ride as I work out my frustrations.
> 
> Also to note: the beginning of this chapter takes up from the cliffhanger last chapter, which I added yesterday (12/26/19), because a reader pointed out that I... completely forgot about BB-8. (Thank you, dear reader!!) So if you read the first draft of last chapter, ch-ch-check out the new bits.

The droid rocked back and forth and gave a shallow bleep, akin to a shrug. Ben pushed himself to his feet and, with one last glance at his other half asleep on the bed, he hurried into the common room. He knew this ship, even if he hadn’t been on it in years. So many years. He could walk it blindfolded. He knew the taste of the recycled air, and the hum of the hyperdrive and the way it felt when gravity caught the edges of the ship when they left the atmosphere.

So he didn’t even think where he was going before he was standing in the doorway to the cockpit. The Wookie sat in the co-pilot seat, where he always had, even in Ben’s memories, and in the other was a man with curly dark hair, muttering to himself as he flipped the engine over and activated the hyperdrive.

Finn must’ve sensed him, because he glanced back and gave a start. “You’re still here.”

“Can they see me?” Ben asked.

“ _What_?” Asked the pilot, before he glanced back—right through him.

Ben didn’t know why, but his stomach dropped. He felt like a fool thinking that for a moment he wasn’t—that he was—

“Nothing. Just thought I saw something,” Finn replied, glaring at Ben, before he turned back in his seat, and held the communications headpiece to his ear. The signal on the console blinked familiar coordinates: the Resistance Base. “Yeah, we’re going to need medical attention right away. Yeah, it’s Rey—no the Falcon isn’t on fire again.”

“That was _one time_!” Poe bit back, and the Wookie made a noise of disagreement.

Ben knew very well when he wasn’t wanted, so he left the cockpit and sat down in the common area. The game of Dejarik he had interrupted between Finn and the Wookie was still set on the table.

“Eh, he’s easy to beat, kid,” the memory of his father echoed in his head. “He’s only got one good play.”

“Chewie said he beat you for twenty years before you found it.”

His father had looked stricken. “Not like anyone was counting.” Then he had leaned forward, secretive, and said, “You wanna know how to win?”

“Isn’t that cheating?”

“It’s beating the odds, kid.”

The corner of Ben’s lips twitched down at the memory, at the sadness welling in his bones, and he moved one of Finn’s pieces. As he walked away, the holo-set lit up, exclaiming the winner.

* * *

The Falcon arrived on Ajan Kloss an hour or so later. Ben hadn’t left Rey’s side. She didn’t seem like she was getting any worse, but she wasn’t getting better, either, and the link between them was strange and hazy. Something he couldn’t concentrate on anymore. A bridge that was fraying at the edges.

There was a lot of rush as soon as the Falcon landed. A medical team boarded the ship and took Rey away on a stretcher. Ben followed them as close as he could, dancing around anyone who almost stepped through him. He didn’t like the feeling. It was cold and intrusive, and every time someone did he felt little particles of himself drift away, slow to return.

Ajan Kloss was humid and muggy, and there was more green than he had seen in... well, years. He was so used to barren wastelands and lava pits, he didn’t realize how much he missed greenery. Forests and mountains and lakes. He couldn’t feel the wind through the trees, but he knew it was there, and he couldn’t smell freshly upturned earth, but he remembered how he used to love it. Things he didn’t remember until the very end.

The dark took away so much of him. It boxed all of the good parts away, chiseled him down until he was raw and hurting. He was quite sure absolutely everyone at this base would love to take a crack at killing him if he were still alive.

They took Rey into a medical tent, and he stopped just outside, where Finn waited with his arms crossed, facing the door. He drummed his fingers on his bicep, and when Ben stopped beside him, he asked, “You think this is your fault? Those hunters?”

He looked away. “I don’t think so.”

“But you don’t know.”

“...No.”

“Seems suspicious to me.”

“I won’t let anything happen to her,” he replied, and Finn faced him with a scoff.

“Let nothing happen to her? She’s already been through enough because of you. Everyone at this base has. None of us need to go through more.”

“I know,” he replied, and as he turned to leave into the tent, Poe stepped right through him. Ben shivered, crossing his arms as if it would help him keep himself together. “Rey is stable, but Maz can’t seem to figure out what’s causing the fever.”

“It’s not a poison?” Finn asked, furrowing his brows.

Ben felt himself grow cold.

“Not any kind she’s seen.” Poe pushed his hands through his hair and then said, “Finn, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on. If Rey... something happens to her...” His voice shook. “We’ve almost lost her too many times already.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So please, tell me what’s happening? How did you know to go to Tatooine? That she was sick?”

“Well, Kylo—”

Poe stiffened. “If you say _Ren_ —”

“I’m trying to explain.”

“The Supreme Leader is dead,” Poe replied, his voice shaking at the thought that Kylo Ren might just be alive. He didn’t know what to think anymore after Palpatine, he didn’t know how evil could be cut down to the root, and the root grow back again. “Rey killed Kylo Ren. He’s gone.”

“Well, technically I killed myself,” Ben murmured, earning a glare from Finn.

“And what are you looking at? Finn,” he repeated gentler, and took the ex-stormtrooper by the elbow in a way that was too familiar to be friendly, the touch too soft. “What’s going on?”

The black man pursed his lips, looking from Poe to Ben, and then back to Poe. “...Remember what I wanted to tell Rey on Pasaana? When we were about to die?”

This wasn’t really the kind of conversation Ben felt he needed to be privy to, and he had much more concern for Rey than anyone else. As he turned toward the medical tent, he heard Finn say,

“...I’m force-sensitive.”

“ _What_?”

It was a good idea he walked away, because he didn’t want to hear how Finn was going to explain _him_.

* * *

Rey was asleep on a soft cot, a monitor hooked to her chest to record her heart beat and breath. It looked as though her fever had gone down a little, because she wasn’t as flushed, but he couldn’t be sure since he couldn’t feel her, even when he brushed the back of his fingers against her cheek.

In the quiet of the medical tent, he sank down onto the chair beside Rey’s bed. He couldn’t help but to think that this was somehow all his fault. Maybe he had sent those bounty hunters after her, but he just didn’t remember. He had been angry and sleep-deprived so often that when he thought back to his time as Kylo Ren, the memories were strange and warped, as if the entire time he had been on the outside looking in.

What if he caused this? What if she died because of him?

“Oh, my,” said a surprised voice behind him.

Ben quickly stood and spun around, and was greeted by an older humanoid female, googles resting lightly atop her head. He’d never seen her specie before, but there was a subtle power that he sensed from her, ancient and knowing. But he shouldn’t have been so surprised. It wasn’t like she could see him, so he couldn’t get into trouble. The tension in his shoulders melted, and he stepped to the side to let her sit down.

But then she turned her gaze to him. “You look so much like your mother.”

He froze.

“Leia told me a lot about you in the months we worked together here,” she went on in a wise, soft cadence.

He bristled. “You... can see me?”

“Don’t be fooled. These eyes can see a lot more than you’d think,” she replied, tongue-in-cheek. “I’m glad she finally reached you, Ben Solo.”

He felt his throat begin to tighten, and swallowed down the lump rising in his throat. “I never wanted her to make that choice.”

“It was the easiest one she ever made. You, on the other hand, have some tough choices ahead,” and she turned her gaze back to Rey. “It is a force sickness. A leech. I am afraid the medical technicians were unable to do much aside alleviate her pain, and I’m not trained in the Force.”

He didn’t think he heard right. “A Force sickness?”

She nodded. “The kind that attacks one’s life, and not the body itself, and as it feeds, it grows more powerful. The black marks on her side are simply the injection point. Though, I don’t think this strain kills its host. It just... pacifies it.”

“So she’ll be okay? She’ll get better?”

“No, but she also won’t get worse. She’ll just be. Until she’s not.”

Until she’s not. Until whatever drained her life had its fill and finished her off.

“Whoever these bounty hunters are, they must not care about her, but her abilities. Her connection to the Force. I daresay if you weren’t there, they would have taken her even with all of her talents.”

A worm of dread began to twist in his gut. “Then... is there anything you can do?”

“There isn’t another Jedi to help her, so no.”

“Then... could I? We’re still linked through our dyadic bond. Perhaps I could try to reach her through that?”

The small woman tilted her head. “You aren’t alive. If you lose that form, aren’t you afraid you might not be able to come back?”

To that, he gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Yes. But I’m already dead. There’s nothing for me here, but she has... she has family here. People who love her.”

“Are you one of those people?”

The question surprised him. He opened his mouth, and closed it again, trying to find the right answer, but then he just frowned and shook his head. “I don’t think I deserve to.”

The old woman was quiet for a moment longer as she picked a bit of lint from her pants leg, as if waiting for him to change his mind. Which was absurd. He knew what he was. He knew the kind of monster he had been.

He knew there was no coming back from that.

“I won’t tell you not to try, Ben Solo,” she finally said, “but be careful. There’s a darkness to this sickness. It’s hard to explain.”

His lips twitched at the irony of that. “I’m not afraid of darkness.” Then he came up to the other side of the young woman who was his other half, the part of him he could never be, and laid his hand gently on her stomach, where the center of her life force pulsed.

He closed his eyes, and concentrated on their bond. On their bridge. On seeing her, just like he had all of those other times when he had been alive, when their two worlds melded together.

The next he knew, he stood in front of a door.

Intricately designed with stars and vast rolling deserts, with no way to open it. He remembered the last time he was here. He had forced his way in, and there were still cracks in the doorway. He had been so angry and violent. He had torn his way into her head, searching for what he needed, breaking through barrier after barrier as she screamed and—

He felt sick thinking about it.

He should never have come back here, but there was no one else who could do this, and so he pressed his forehead against the door, and whispered,

“Rey, I’m here.”

The door didn’t budge, and he felt the sting of tears in his eyes. He gritted his teeth and tried again, louder, “Rey, please let me in.”

But still she wouldn’t.

Though he felt her, as clear as day, on the other side. He felt her worry, and her sharp fear—because she remembered, too, the last time he was here.

“My light, please. Let me save you, and I will never— _never_ —use this bond again,” then, more quietly, “I promise.”

The door opened with a crack, and he fell into a bath of light—

—And emerged onto the other side, blinking in the bright daylight. He winced, shielding his eyes with his hand, as his vision adjusted. He stood on the edge of a beautiful pond in the middle of a forest, three gigantic moons reflected in it. And at the edge of the pond, tucked into the corner, was a cozy cabin.

“Rey?” He called, walking towards it. The mountains in the distance were blurry, and there was a strange fog that drifted between the trees, making it so he couldn’t see very far at all. He had never been here before in Rey’s mind, and he didn’t recognize the planet, either.

The house was small and quaint, with a far bedroom sectioned off bya metal door, and a usable kitchen. There were toys scattered around the floor. Could this have been Rey’s childhood home?

Wherever it was, it was golden and peaceful. It was somewhere he could stay forever, really.

He took an automated photo frame down from the mantle, searching for the button to turn it on, when a child ran into the house in bare feet, tracking mud across the floor. He quickly put the picture back as the little girl hid behind his legs.

She laughed—

“Daddy! Daddy! Save me! Momma’s gonna get me!”

—as a woman with long brown hair, half-tied back into a twist, came into the house with what looked like scavenged bolts and bits on her fingers, play-snarling. “You can’t hide from me, General Scalavenger!”

Ben stared at her. Rey—he knew it was Rey, but she looked so... so _happy_.

It made his heart twist.

Her eyes met his and she looked at him, really looked, and a smile reached across her entire face. It was a smile that stunned him, because he had never seen it so bright before. It reached up into her brown eyes and made them dance. She was so beautiful.

It took his breath away.

“Ah-ha! My greatest rival!” Rey cried, abandoning the bolts that had been her claws, and grabbed a broom leaning against the doorway.

The little girl clung to his pants legs. “Aaah! Daddy! Fight her! Defend the home base!”

“... _Daddy_?” He murmured, but the little girl didn’t give him a moment to spare as she shoved him toward Rey. He grabbed the mop from the sink and raised it just in time to deflect her first attack. He parried, she attacked, and he parried again, like it was instinctual. They weren’t actually fighting. She would swing one way, and he would know which way she did, so he swung the other, back and forth, the broom and mop handles smacking against each other with vibrant—

_Clack! Clack!_

When she attacked a last time, he blocked her, but she simply leaned in to the attack, until they were only a few inches from each other. Close enough for him to reach his head between their crossed sticks and kiss her. Oh gods he wanted to. The wooden handles groaned with the weight.

“I think we could join forces,” she said, a little out of breath. “You’re good with a saber.”

“I think we have already,” he replied.

“Hmm, you make a good point. A draw?”

“I could never win otherwise.”

She smiled again, and let down her attack. “It’s good to see you home,” she said as she reached up and scrubbed his head, and kissed him on the cheek. “We’ve got mieces for dinner, and some vegetables. Padme, why don’t you set the table?”

Padme. His grandmother’s name.

The little girl huffed. “But I don’t wanna!”

Rey gave her a look, and she puffed out her cheeks and stomped off toward the kitchen. Then Rey turned back to him, and her smile slightly faltered. “What’s that look for? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

A ghost.

The word snapped him back to his senses. No matter how golden this place looked, it wasn’t real. He had to keep remembering that—this place wasn’t real. The little girl wasn’t real.

This life...

“We should go, Rey,” he said, his voice shaking, because somewhere in the back of his mind, the shadows whispered, _But you could stay._

_You could stay forever._

She cocked her head. “Go where? Is Poe sending you on another mission already?”

“Poe?”

“The general of the resistance,” she said, as if he was being silly. “It takes an army to raise a republic. He’s doing good though, don’t you think? Oh, and have you talked with Rose? She supposed to visit us sometime—”

“I died, Rey.”

“You look alive to me.”

“No, back during the war. I—”

She gave him a bemused look, and brushed his dark hair out of his face. Her touch was featherlight, and so endearing it made his chest ache. “I healed you on Kef Bir, stop being so dramatic.”

He took her hand in his, and pressed it against his cheek, and said, his voice growing thick, “I died on Exegol, my light.”

Her eyes widened. As if she had forgotten. Or wanted to forget. She sucked in a shaky breath, and twisted her hand out of his grip. “No, you didn’t.”

But she sounded like she wasn’t so sure.

“I’m dead, and this isn’t real, and if you stay much longer you’ll be dead, too.” He turned to leave, hoping she’d follow. “We have to go—”

She caught him by the wrist and pulled him back.

“No. I want to stay here,” she replied, and when he opened his mouth to argue, to tell her to open her senses, to feel the darkness nipping at the edges of this sun-soaked dream, she caught his lips with hers, and kissed him long and hard, and she didn’t let up until they both had to come up for breath. “Just a little while longer,” she added, a plea against his mouth.

He hesitated.

“ _Please_ , Ben.”

“Setted the table!” The little girl announced, and it startled Ben away from Rey.

“At least until after dinner,” she added, and retreated to the table. He hadn’t seen her cook anything or bring anything in, but there was a full meal waiting at the table when he turned around. Cautiously, he sat down opposite of her. He had to keep reminding himself this wasn’t real, because the golden evening sunlight that slanted through the door looked real enough, and was warm enough, that it began to trick him all over again.

This could be real.

The little girl, Padme, had wild black hair down to her shoulders and sticky fingers, and she had a stubborn set to her brow like her mother. The more he looked at the girl, the more he wished she was his. The more he wished he could actually steal a piece of meat from her plate when she wasn’t looking, and tell her she had to eat all of her freeze-dried vegetables, and tuck her into bed when she began to doze on his lap a few hours later, as he was reading to her from a storybook. He wished for a life like this, more than anything else, and he knew he’d never have it as he carried her into her small room, and he and Rey tucked her into bed.

He turned on her starry nightlight and closed the door to her room. “Padme?” He asked Rey.

“You named her,” she replied. The table had been magically cleaned from dinner, and the heater light was low in the corner of the cabin, and the night was the perfect shade of cool. She laced her fingers through his and pulled him toward a sofa near the heater. “She looks a lot like you.”

“But she’s not mine.”

“Of course she is, and so am I.” Then she leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his mouth again, and then his jaw, and his neck. He stumbled back onto the sofa, and she crawled on top of him.

“Rey—”

“I’ve missed you,” she said, her kisses trailing down his neck. But this wasn’t real, and this wasn’t really Rey—not the Rey he knew, who was stoic and quiet and headstrong. She was comfortable with delirium now, heady with it.

“We have to leave,” he said, and groaned when she sat back on his waist.

“No, we don’t. We can stay.” She took his right hand and pressed it against her right breast. Her skin, even through her thin gray robe, felt flushed under his touch. Real and warm. “We don’t have to go. We can stay here—forever.”

“No. Not like this.”

She jerked back as if he’d betrayed her. “Don’t you want to stay with me?”

“I’m sorry,” he choked out, the words like shards of glass in his mouth, “but not like this. Because this isn’t real, and I don’t want to have you.” He sat up, and pressed his forehead against hers, because he didn’t realize these words would be so sharp, and so damaging. He didn’t realize how much the truth would ache, when faced against this perfect prison. “I want you to have me, my light. I want to give you everything I have. Everything I am.”

“But you’re dead,” she replied, and her voice cracked. “Out there, you can never be mine.”

He gave her a sad smile. “I’m sorry.” He gathered her hands into his and squeezed them tightly. “But there are people out there waiting for you. Living people. They love you.”

“Not like you.”

“No, but this, here?” He looked around at her perfect life. Her perfect family. Her perfect everything. And he kissed her fingers, wishing he could take all of the pain away. “This isn’t happiness. This is a prison, my light. There are no shadows. There’s nothing—”

“There’s _us_!” She cried in anger, tears bright in her eyes, and stood from the couch.

Slowly, he stood against her. “No, there’s only you.”

The words slowly sank in, through the delirious, through the sickness, and she looked around the small cabin, as if seeing it for the first time, as horror slowly began to leak across her face. “This isn’t real,” she finally repeated, and as she did, things began to fade—first the furniture, then the curtains. Then she turned her gaze back to him, and there was his Rey again, no longer enchanted by whatever sickness this was.

The little girl opened the door to her room, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. “Mommy? Daddy? Where are you going?”

“This isn’t real,” she repeated, putting her hands over her ears. “This isn’t real.”

He enveloped her in his arms, and pressed him tightly against her.

“This isn’t real,” she murmured. “This isn’t real.”

“Mommy! _Daddy_!” The girl screamed, reaching out to them—

And then she vanished.

The cabin vanished. The trees—all of it bleeding up into the infinite darkness that had become the sky, and they were standing on a pond with two sides. One was he and Rey, a force-ghost and a Jedi haunted, and their reflection was everything they’d never have. A life, a family, a home. The wind swirled around them, trying to pry them apart, and it only made him cling to her tighter.

He glanced up into the expanse—and the darkness roared. Heat singed their hair. He had felt this power so many times before. Hot like freshly-spilled blood, throbbing like an angry heartbeat.

Rey looked up with him. “Is that what’s keeping me here?”

“Yes.”

She set her jaw and reached up toward it, and winced as the wind snapped her hand back. He steadied her arm, threading his fingers into hers, their palms facing the infinite darkness—

_Stay._

_You are happy._

_You are safe._

—the darkness crooned.

“You—cannot—keep me!” She roared.

Because no one ever could. That was what he loved about her. She was a daystar, and the rest of them were just planets who fell into her orbit. Nothing could contain her. Nothing could entrap her.

Nothing could claim her.

He felt her power surge up her body, from her toes to her fingertips, and bleed into him. Strong, and light, and—and true. And it made the light in him, so small it was like a candle against a sun, flare brighter. The darkness above them wavered, a thousand screams shrieking at them, crying, raging—before the sky cracked in half, shattering like glass. The dark poison he had sensed vanished with it.

Rey looked back at him with a smile. “You came for m—”

Suddenly, she vanished in a burst of light, and he fell down, down, down into nothingness.

And disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH NO DID BEN GO BACK INTO THE FORCE? IS HE GONE FOREVER?
> 
> Ha, yeah, we’ve got like 6 more chapters. He’s definitely not gone.
> 
> ... Or is he?


	6. Run to You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bounty hunters attack the Resistance Base on Ajan Kloss, and Ben is no where to be found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoooo! Thank you all for sticking with me. I’m really having fun fleshing out this story that was once a one-shot, and the chapters are getting progressively longer as I keep roping in more characters. It’s fine, everything’s fine. 
> 
> Thank you so much for putting up with me and my admittedly spotty Star Wars vocab. Wookiepedia is my best friend. 
> 
> Also very much not beta’d. I like livin’ on the edge. Enjoy!

Finn hadn’t paced so much in his life. Back and forth, back and forth, outside of the medical tent, until he was sure he’d run a rut into the ground. His partner leaned against a stack of crates, reading messages from other bases, detailing the surrender of more Star Destroyers across the galaxy.

“Pacing isn’t going to do you any good, you know,” Poe said with a sigh, putting down his encryption pad. “We have some of the best medics in the Resistance, and Maz seems to know what’s wrong with her. Rey will be fine.”

“But it wasn’t like any poison I’d ever seen. Have you?”

“No.”

“And then Kylo went in there and he hasn’t come out—what do you think he’s planning? He’s planning something, he has to be.”

Poe tucked the pad into his jacket pocket and massaged the bridge of his nose. “I want to say this in the most loving way possible, but are you sure you also don’t need to see a medic? Sometimes war can mess with your head, you know—”

Finn turned on his heels, eyes widening as he faced his partner. “You think I’m _seeing_ things?”

“Kylo Ren’s dead. We’ve got multiple confirmations from Exegol, among other sources.”

“But there’s no body. I don’t trust it when there’s no body.”

“Yeah, and Leia disappeared, too. Maybe it’s a Skywalker thing.”

“A Jedi thing.”

Poe scoffed. “Kylo Ren was no Jedi. I’m not saying I don’t believe you,” he added, but somehow it didn’t make Finn feel any better, “but I _am_ saying that maybe things have been stressful over the last few days and—”

“How did I know to go to Tatooine? Hmm?” He interrupted, because he knew where Poe was going, because there had been plenty of fighters who saw ghosts after the wars, who were shaken down to their bones. Finn sometimes felt the suffocating construction of the Stormtrooper mask in his nightmares, and he knew the difference between _that_ and force ghost Kylo Ren. “How did I know Rey’d be there? How did I know it was a poison from a bounty hunter?”

Poe opened his mouth, then closes it again, and shook his head. Because he didn’t know, either.

“It wasn’t the Force or a feeling—it was Ren. I wish you would _trust_ me on this,” he added, pleading, and reached out to him. Took him by the hand. Squeezed his calloused and cracked fingers tightly. “Please.”

His partner looked him in the eyes, ochre and warm and understanding, and he nodded. “Okay. I believe you.”

He let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

* * *

For the rest of the day, friends came up to the tent to see how Rey was fairing. Chewie asked if she’d woken up, Rose if she was getting better, C3P-0 if there was anything he could do, R2D2 with him. They were all very worried, and that just seemed to make Finn worry more, because he didn’t know what to tell them. He was glad, at least, that Poe had a clearer head and a steadier hand. He always set the course true when Finn felt like everything was spiraling out of control. Poe was a guiding star, and he was just lucky enough to have found it to follow, and that made the waiting so much easier.

Poe kissed him quickly on the mouth before he left and said, “Don’t worry too much. She’ll be fine. She’s our Rey. She’ll never go anywhere without a fight.”

Then his partner went to busy himself with Resistance work—there was always work—work that Finn should have been doing, too. Constructing supply lines to cities and towns devastated by the collapse of the Empire, sending rebels out to planets who hadn’t yet overthrown their overlords, doing the menial paperwork needed for death certificates and ship clearances. There was so much to do, but he couldn’t think about any of it without knowing whether Rey was going to live or die.

And without being able to do anything about it.

It wasn’t until around dusk when a medic came up and said that her fever had broken, that she should be waking up soon. The poison was disappearing from her system, and it felt like a weight had been lifted off of his chest. He could finally breathe again.

He ducked into the medical tent, darting his gaze around for any signs of _him._ The ghost couldn’t have gone very far. But he wasn’t near Rey, or at her side, and he frowned because he could’ve sworn that he had disappeared this way.

Over the last few hours, he’d gone through what he felt was the five stages of grief. First it was denial that Kylo Ren could be back—even as a ghost. Because he was dead, and the sooner he was forgotten the better. And then that just made him _angry_ , because of all the people who had died during this stupid war, _he_ had to be the one to come back? As a _Force Ghost_? He’d done so much wrong—not as much as Vader, granted, but enough. There had to be some other reason he was back. It had to be a trick of his mind. Maybe, he bargained, if they just let Kylo Ren go through whatever he was meant to go through, he could return to being dead and gone. But what if he never _left?_ What if Finn saw his ugly, smug mug his entire life? That just made him depressed, and tired.

And all the worrying made his head hurt.

He’d just have to accept that the ex-Supreme Leader was here and haunting Rey, and whether she _allowed_ it to happen was far beyond him. But as he came to check on her, the room was empty and quiet, save for the soft beep of her heart monitor.

“He’s gone,” said Maz.

Finn jumped. He hadn’t even seen her settled in the chair. “Oh—sorry. Is this a bad—what did you say?”

“Ben. He’s gone.”

It couldn’t be _that_ easy. “Gone, like... for a walk?”

The edges of the old woman’s lips twitched up, and she turned back to Rey. “No. I daresay he went a little farther than that. The illness was Force-connected, and so he was the only one who could reach her through their link.”

Finn gritted his teeth. Of _course_ the ghost was the only one who could help Rey. What a convenience. “I just don’t understand why he’s here, and why Rey didn’t just—just send him _back_ to wherever he crawled out of.”

“Perhaps their bond is different than you think.”

“They were always fighting.”

“She was always fighting to reach him, never to kill him.”

“And he was fighting—”

“To reach her. Perhaps they realized too late what that feeling was, but in the world between worlds all times are connected, so maybe it was too early, or not early enough.”

Finn frowned, puzzled. “Okay, I have a feeling this is some Force jargon so—you’re saying Rey _cared_ about Kylo?”

“Of course.”

“And Kylo—”

“Ben gave his life for her. On Exegol.”

Finn began to understand, though he wasn’t sure if he wanted to, and sat down heavily in the chair. “So what you’re saying is... that Rey _loved_ him?” Finn asked as Poe ducked into the tent to find them. He came up to sit on the arm of the chair, resting his hand gently at the nape of Finn’s neck.

Maz asked, “Is that really so hard to imagine? That love can reach someone in the darkest of places?”

Finn exchanged a look with his partner. He had a lot to think about, both about how he felt about Kylo Ren, and how he felt about Rey forgiving him so easily. Because that didn’t take back the years of abuse and neglect and, frankly, _murder_. But he, himself, had murdered quite a few people too, while fighting for the Resistance.

They all had, for the good of the republic.

He tried to understand all of it, and sort it out with what he knew about the Force—which was, admittedly, not a whole hell of a lot—before asking, “Then if he’s a Force Ghost, why isn’t he coming back?”

Poe glanced around. “Kylo’s not here? Pity, I wanted to see if I could punch a ghost,” he said dryly, earning an elbow in the side from Finn. “What? It’d be for research.”

Maz couldn’t help but to crack a small smile. “A Force Ghost is only as strong as the memory you hold. It takes decades of training to be able to hold a solid form, or so I’ve heard. I’m not sure how Ben has existed without any prior training, unless there is something, some part of him somewhere, that is still here. Force Ghosts can be anywhere, at any time, because they are part of the Force but Ben... _isn’t_. He only came when Rey pulled him here. Now with his form gone, he may be lost again. He knew that, but he went to wake Rey anyway.”

“Fine with me, as long as she wakes up,” he said with a bitter relief.

But Maz shook her head. “How many times does one have to die before they are forgiven?”

“As many as it takes,” Poe replied, and took a data pad out of his coat pocket. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but when you get a chance, there are a few documents you need to sign so we can send compensation to the widowers from the battle on Exegol.”

“Hopefully the last of them,” Finn replied, beginning to stand—when a sharp blast cut through the base.

What followed quickly was chaos.

Maz closed her eyes. “They’re here.”

Finn and Poe exchanged a look, and then they were scrambling out of their chair and out of the medical tent. Three—no, four—ships roared above them, landing at the edge of the base. As soon as the ships touched down, their landing ramps extended, and out came people all dressed in the same pristine silver armor and silver helmets obscuring their faces.

Finn cursed. He recognized attackers—their armor. He recognized them from the brief glimpse from Tatooine, the sparkle of them on the distant dunes. They’d tracked Rey all the way across the galaxy, and now they were _here_?

The base was in a frenzy, people gathering their belongings left and right, fleeing as fast as they could onto their ships. A few of them were racing to the weapons depot, but there weren’t nearly enough good fighters to take on a task force like this.

“They’re here for Rey,” Finn murmured, dread brewing in his stomach.

“Then we gotta make sure we get her out of—”

He took Poe by the jacket collar and said, “Help people escape.”

“And you?”

That was easy enough. He took out his pistol and said, “I’ll hold them off.”

Poe hesitated. But then he nodded. “Okay. Don’t get killed.” Then—surprising Poe—he kissed him on the lips, and took of running toward the main part of base where resistance ships were already igniting into the sky.

One of the attackers raised their strange hammer-like weapon and sent it down against Finn, and he dodged to the side. These weren’t like any bounty-hunters he knew.

“For the Bonds!” The attacker roared.

He scrambled out of the way of the hammer. It slammed against the ground. A shock wave rippled out of it, almost knocking him over. But he managed to keep on his feet, and as the attacker tried to pull up his hammer again, he took a running start for the man. He shoved his shoulder into the man and they both went down to the dirt. Finn pinned him to the ground, his pistol shoved between his armor and helmet, right against his neck. “Who are you guys? What do you want?”

“All for the Bond. All rise to cross the Bridge,” the man said.

No, not a bounty-hunter at all.

But a _cult._

_“Why do you want Rey?”_

_“Because a bridge has two sides,” the cultist replied with fervor, and suddenly grabbed Finn’s hand, and made him squeeze the trigger. The shot went straight through the man’s neck, and he lay dormant on the ground._

_Finn forced himself to his feet, shaken. Who_ _were_ _these people?_

_A strange feeling tickled the back of his neck, and he glanced over toward the woods. Another group of cultists surfaced from the foliage, their silver armor pristine._

The leader of the cult stepped out of the woods with them. She wore piercing silver armor that shone like a mirror, and carried with her a sword that sizzled with electricity on the blade. She leveled her gaze to Finn. There was a black streak of paint across her eyes like a marking—or a mask. He pushed himself back to his feet, and took another step back.

The woman’s eyes were vacant—like glass marbles.

“Find the bridge!” She roared to her cultists. “Take her!”

_Rey._

“No!” He cried, putting himself between the medical tent and the leader. He raised his blaster, aiming straight for her head. “I won’t let you.”

The woman cocked her head. “We won’t harm her.”

“Yeah, tell that to one of your other guys who _poisoned_ her.”

“Poisoned? No, we simply let her see what she’d could have if she came with us. If she wanted to leave, she could—at any time. The Nox poison only keeps you if you want to stay. Aren’t you curious as to why she did? As to what’s more important than _you_?”

He tightened his grip on his blaster. “You’re not making any sense.”

“I doubt to you I ever will—”

Suddenly, a shot whizzed past her ear, striking one of the cultists behind her. Finn glanced over his shoulder. “ _Poe_!” He gasped in surprise. “I told you to—”

“Since when have I listened?” He asked, and Chewie surfaced from the medical tent behind him, Rey draped over his shoulder. The Wookie gave a roar, hefting his bowcaster up, and fired into the group of cultists. They scattered in the blast, clearing a path. “Take Rey to the Falcon! Get her out of here!” 

The enormous Wookie roared and took off running toward the Falcon. He didn’t look back, taking down every cult member that began to come after them.

Poe began to follow after, but Finn grabbed his partner by the arm. “We have to hold them off as long as possible. They want Rey. Not us.”

“Then let’s give them some time.”

* * *

As it turned out, it didn’t take very long for the cult members to surround the both of them, and they weren’t stupid enough to keep fighting when they were clearly outnumbered and outmatched.

Poe pushed himself up to sit as the cult leader came over to them.

“Where did she go?” The leader asked, and he grinned, his mouth bloodied from his busted lip.

“Somewhere you won’t find.”

The woman sneered. “ _Insolent_.” Then she ordered her cultists take them back to her ship, and kill anyone else left in the Resistance Base, but thankfully most everyone had escaped in the chaos. Or at least, Poe hoped. “Take them back to the ship. If they protected that girl, that means she’s important to them—and they her. I tire of chasing. Let her come to us.”

“Yes, Bright Aluna,” the cultists intoned.

Poe’s stomach flopped. “Wait—no, we’re not—”

The woman slammed the butt of her weapon across his face, and knocked him out cold. She gave Finn a look of warning, but he stayed quiet, lips pursed, and with a silent understanding she walked away.

* * *

A patrol of three cultists walked by, but Rose stayed completely still. These must have been the people who had been after Rey, and now they had both Finn and Poe, and while she had some unresolved tensions with Finn, she couldn’t just sit back and let these cultists take them. But if she tried to attack them, they would quickly overpower her. She wasn’t very good at shooting, or fighting, or—well—anything that didn’t involve dusty tech and vast ships.

But she couldn’t just _let_ them take Poe and Finn without doing something, but she didn’t know what to do.

She wished someone—anyone—could point her in the right direction.

But no one could.

She was alone, if she had learned anything, it was that anything she didn’t try she didn’t succeed. So she grabbed a rock from by her feet, and tossed it a little ways away from the patrolling cults.

One of them whipped their heads toward the sound. “Did you hear that?”

“Sounded like an animal,” one of the other cultists replied. They had a strange accent she couldn’t place. “Don’t get distracted. We must find the Bridge for Bright Aluna.”

“Yeah, but I hate all of this nature—” The cultist suddenly froze, and in front of them the air shimmered.

 _You feel like you must check out the sound anyway,_ said a voice from the shimmery mass.

And, deadpan, the cultist repeated, “I feel I must check it out.”

The cultist sighed. “If you _must_.”

Rose watched as, impossibly, the cultist shuffled over to the edge of the ravine by the crates, only a few yards from where she hid. She squeezed herself tighter against the boxes, hoping he wouldn’t see. The drop was very long, but not so far as so she couldn’t climb back up, and she debated on whether to dive once he caught her.

But the cultist simply stopped at the edge of the cliff, and stood there.

The air shimmered behind them again, coalescing this time into a semi-solid figure.

“Sometimes we all need a little push, don’t we?” He said in a crisp accent, his arms folded into the sleeves of his robes, and then he raised his leg and planted his foot into the back of the cultist, pushing him down the sharp slope to the bottom, and went still. “Sometimes literally.”

“But you’re—you are...” Rose murmured, staring wide-eyed at the ghost. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with honey-colored hair and a well-trimmed beard. She recognized him from the history feeds. “...Master Obi-Wan?” 

He nudged his head toward one of the cultist ships. “Hurry up, the ship’s leaving. You should be on it.”

“But—but...”

“Our secret. No one else’s,” he replied, and disappeared.

Rose stared at where he had been a moment before, blinking, and then looked away. “Right. Okay. Yeah. I did _not_ just see the ghost of a very dead Jedi. That didn’t happen. That _totally_ didn’t happen.” She slapped her cheeks to snap herself out of whatever she’d just seen, and hurriedly slid down the embankment to the cultist at the bottom. 

She disrobed the unconscious cultist and put on the strange armor, and the helmet, and scurried back up the embankment to the top. The armor felt strangely light—almost like it was made of air—and she wondered what kind of aluminum it was made from, and how it could be so durable.

“Oi, Gale. Stop pissin’ around. You know Leader doesn’t like when we don’t keep to formation,” said the other cultist, returning from his patrol. “Did you find anything?”

“Um—no?”

He stared at her. “You’re not—”

She pushed him, and he went tumbling down the steep embankment again, and went still. “Always have the high ground,” she murmured to herself, and hurried off toward the ship, praying that she could at least stay unnoticed until they reached wherever they were going.

And hoped desperately that this was a good idea.

* * *

Rey woke up to the sound of the Falcon’s engines powering to life. She had been tossed somewhat haphazardly onto the cushions in the common room, and as she pushed herself to sit up, she tried to get her baring. How was she only the Falcon? The last she remembered was...

…Was Tatooine.

And the strangest dream, on the side of a beautiful lake, and a child, and—“Ben.”

His name came out as a gasp, and she looked around for him, but he was no where to be found. She couldn’t sense him, either. She tried to reach out to him through their bond, to try to summon him, but on the other side all she felt was...

Nothingness.

Cold and dark and—nothing.

“Ben?” She called again, but there was no answer. Her throat began to constrict.

_No._

Chewbacca growled an expletive from the cockpit as the Falcon shook—from a blast. Someone was shooting at them. The ship tilted to the side, and she had to grasp onto the gaming table so she wouldn’t fall off the bench.

BB-8 made a distressed bleep as it slid to the other side of the commons.

“Cultists?” She asked, surprised, but there was no time for BB-8 to explain.

Rey pushed herself to her feet and stumbled into the cockpit. The sky bled black with stars, but the Falcon hadn’t yet ascended into space yet. Gravity pulled on it yet, and with the barrage of heavy fire, all Chewie could do was swirl and dodge just to miss them.

They weren’t going to lose these—these _cultists—_ unless something was done.

“Chewie, where’s Poe and Finn?” She asked, and when he answered, she tensed. “They _what_? No—we have to go back. We have to—”

He tilted the ship, and she grappled onto the side of the doorway. She squeezed her eyes shut, almost afraid to reach out—but then she felt them. Sparks of light in the dark. Finn and Poe. They were already captured, but they were still alive.

And she reached a little farther, but there was still no Ben.

She remembered the lake, and telling her it wasn’t real, begging her to wake up, to come back. But now she was here in the waking world again and he was gone, and for a moment, remembering the softness of his hands cupping her face, and his lips hungrily on hers, she wondered if this was the right choice.

No—it was. She had to remember it was.

Right now what mattered was them getting away from the cultists. To lead them away from the Resistance base and anyone else who was left there. The warnings across the Falcon flared to life. She and Chewie couldn’t both drive the ship _and_ gun down the other ships, because she remembered the last time she and Finn tried. It went... not very well.

She curled her fingers into the doorway until her knuckles turned white. Ben was here. He _was_. “Be with me,” she murmured, concentrating, trying to feel him somewhere in the Force—anywhere. Everywhere. “Be with me. _Be_ with me. B—”

The Falcon jerked in the air. Three more emergency warnings flared to life on the dash. And—suddenly—the ship began to tilt sideways, and suddenly where there was dark sky and space, there was the green, green forests of Ajan Kloss. And they were plummeting toward them.

Cursing, she checked the dash. “One of the sublight engines overheated. I can fix that.” 

Chewie told her to go ahead and do it. Or else they were going down.

Rey pushed herself off the doorway and stumbled her way back to one of the grates, pulled it out, and dropped down into the narrow crawl space.

“Ben,” she murmured, kneeling up to the access to the sublight engines, and closed her eyes, and tried one last time—imagining him, finding him, pulling him from wherever he was. Because it wasn’t in the Force, not like Master Luke was, or Master Leia. But she wanted him anyway, and she forced him out of whatever strange betweenness where his soul was caught. “Be with _m—_ ”

* * *

He stood in the Falcon.

In the cockpit.

His father was in the pilot chair, brownish-gray hair, not quite yet burdened by Ben’s turn to the dark side, in that dull brown coat he always wore, a blaster at his hip. He never went anywhere without it, always saying he didn’t know when someone from his seedy past would come back asking for payback.

His father glanced back. “What’re you waiting for, kid? Sit down.”

This was a memory. He knew because he had been in this moment so many times when he was Kylo Ren, torn somewhere between the dark and the light. But always before, this had been a nightmare, the world outside burning. Now it was... home. The homestead where he lived with his parents. Both of them, together.

Before his mother sent him away to train with his uncle.

Before...

Well, before everything.

He sat down in the co-pilot seat, and powered on his side of the console. The ship hummed, loud and healthy. 

“I figured you’d forgotten how to fly her,” his father said, surprising him.

That hadn’t been part of his memories.

“I...” He looked down at the controls, and then back at his dad. “Solos don’t really forget, do they?”

He put a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Let’s hope not, kid.”

The ship shook, suddenly. Ben grappled onto the console to steady himself. And when he looked back up—there were trees. And mountains. Coming too fast into view.

He jumped into action, and flipped two of the switches to relieve the coolant onto the parts of the ship that were—quite literally—on fire. Another barrage of heavy fire around them. Two ships followed in close pursuit behind and he was—mildly—relieved they were _not_ Empire ships. 

He heard a Wookie yell, and glanced over into the pilot seat—

His father was no longer there, and in his place was Chewbacca. Looking at him with a baffled look of mild terror. Then that meant...

He looked down at his hand, and the soft blue glow that surrounded it.

An alert on the console beeped—warning that one of the ships had locked on. The Wookie forced the Falcon into a barrel roll, and flipped over the ship following them.

Ben took the controls. “We’re getting away, right?”

The Wookie nodded.

“Okay good—”

From back in the ship, he heard Rey shout, “Chewie, the engine’s patched!”

Even better news.

He checked the location screen. “Let’s convert all of the aux power to the hyperdrive, yeah?”

Chewie made a surprised yowl.

“ _Yes_ without coordinates.”

Chewie disagreed.

“Trust me. I can do this.” He said it more for himself than for Chewbacca, because he wasn’t quite sure he _could._ He’d seen Rey lightspeed skip before in their visions, read reports from the black boxes of downed TIE fighters. He thought he had a good enough grasp on it to at least _try._

So, he did what any good Solo would do:

He improvised.

One moment there were mountains and trees, the next there was darkness and stars, swirling by at an alarming speed. He held onto the hyperdrive control for a moment longer, his palm growing sweaty, before he pulled the lever back. 

The Falcon jerked out of hyperdrive—right into the way of a large worm-like creature on a desert planet. The two other ships popped out of hyperdrive next to him. One of them crashed down into the desert, the other narrowly pulled up.

The worm began to fall on top of them.

Chewie yelled.

“I know! I _know_!” Ben cried, slamming the ship into hyperdrive again. It shot through the belly of the worm and into space.

The next time he pulled out of hyperdrive, they were... out in the middle of space. In the middle of _no where_ space. He waited for a beat—and then another—for the following ship to pop out of the stars beside them.

But it must’ve stopped pursuit.

Which either meant they gave up, unlikely, or they were sure Rey would come to them instead.

“Shit,” he muttered, and sat back in the chair that he used to occupy, knowing that if he had a pulse his heart would be racing. He hadn’t done something like that since...well, since his father took him flying years ago. The old ship hadn’t changed much. There wasn’t even a new coat of paint, or new parts—just the same old modified engines and spotty tech, and it felt like home.

And then he sat up straight, and turned to look at the Wookie—who had been staring at him for stars knows how long. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. He didn’t know what to say.

It was obvious the Wookie could see him. It was even more obvious that they had flown his father’s ship together. That they had evaded a cult together. That, not too long ago, he had taken away this Wookie’s best friend. _His_ best friend, too.

And it didn’t matter that he meant to give his lightsaber to his father. Ask him to throw it away since he couldn’t. It didn’t matter that in that moment, Snoke ruptured his mind and pulled him like a puppet, and sent the lightsaber screaming into Han Solo’s chest.

None of it mattered, because it was still his hand.

“I...” Ben began, throat tightening. “I’m...sorry.”

Chewie put a hand atop of his head, like he had when Ben was little, and mussed up his hair as if to say, _I know._

And that was that.

Ben bowed his head. “Thank you.”

“Chewie!” Rey cried, bright and breathless, as she came running back into the cockpit. “I felt us lightspeed skip, did you finally figure out how to— _you!_ ” she added with a gasp. 

Ben quickly stood. “Rey—”

Happiness broke across her face like a dawn, the smile bright in her eyes, the same look he had seen in the sickened dreamworld, and if he breathed it would’ve stole his breath away. She hugged him tightly, and the warmth he had felt in the dreamworld was gone, numb again, but it was okay. He curled his arms around her waist and buried his face into her hair.

“I heard you calling. It was harder to answer,” he said. “Do you remember... No. Nevermind—”

She released him and took him by the hand, squeezing it tightly. “I do. Thank you for getting me out of that nightmare.”

“Nightmare?” He repeated.

“Yes. Even if it was good, it was a prison. You saved me.”

“I had to.”

She looked into his eyes, confused as if he said something that was absurd, and pushed the hair out of his eyes, and behind his ear. “No, you didn’t.”

A knot formed in his throat.

He quickly looked away.

Chewie made a sound behind them.

“A message?” Ben asked, thankful for the interruption. “From the—from where?”

Rey hurried over to the communication board. Her heart kicked in her chest. “It’s from Rose. She’s sending us coordinates to the cultist’s homeworld. It’s a moon on the outer rim—Sau’dade.”

Chewie grunted.

“I haven’t heard anything about it, either,” Ben agreed, and then looked back into the common area of the ship. “How about the droid? Would he?”

The droid bleeped from the back of the common area, rolling out from underneath a pile of trash that had gathered—like him—in the back of the ship while in lightspeed.

“No, he hasn’t heard of it either,” Rey supplied, and squeezed past Ben into the co-pilot chair. “It doesn’t matter. We’re going after Finn and Poe. We don’t have any time to spare.”

Ben shook his head. “It’s a trap.”

“I know. But we don’t leave family behind. Right, Chewie?”

The Wookie gave a guttural reply, and sat back down in his chair. Ben had a bad feeling about this, but it wasn’t because he didn’t want to go. It beckoned him, called, tempted. It was as though, now that he knew the coordinates, it was the place his being kept trying to pull toward. It was where he always disappeared to, gone into the great nothingness.

So instead he only agreed, and sat down in the seat behind Rey. He pushed the Falcon into hyperdrive, and the stars swirled as space let go its fingers from the ship, and propelled them through space, swirling toward some unknown ancient moon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What will they find on this ancient moon of Sau’dade? Who are these cult members? What is the Bond and the Bridge they’re referring to? Where does Ben go, if not into the Force?
> 
> Thank you so much for reading — please comment, leave kudos, subscribe, and I’ll see y’all in the next chapter!


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